POSITIVE ATTITUDE: Louis DeCarolis cooks his Thanksgiving turkey yesterday in a makeshift charcoal pit in front of his Rockaway Beach home. He had endured weeks without power, which was finally restored this week. (Reuters)
They stumbled in the dark for weeks, their homes are filled with mold, and looters are lurking — but Sandy survivors were determined to enjoy Thanksgiving yesterday.
“I lost everything, but we’re still alive,” said Rockaway Beach resident Louis DeCarolis, 51. “So there’s a lot to be thankful for.”
DeCarolis took the resourceful approach to Thanksgiving. With no electricity to power his oven, he dropped 80 pounds of charcoal in a pit he dug in his front yard and earlier this week cooked two turkeys on a makeshift grill.
On Wednesday, his power came back on. He cooked outside anyway.
“We had decided already,” DeCarolis said. “We made up our minds even with the lights back on.”
And survivors in wrecked Brooklyn neighborhoods seemingly forgotten by politicians — like Manhattan Beach and Red Hook — also made the best of holiday.
Patrick Cavanaugh continues to deal with flood damage to his Manhattan Beach home, but still he hosted Thanksgiving dinner last night for family.
Over turkey and stuffing, they talked about how it feels to be forgotten.
“People got destroyed here, but you didn’t hear a word about it,” Cavanaugh said. “I mean, it was like a Third World country here.
“But no politicians came here. No one from the Red Cross was here. It was like we were forgotten about.”
In Red Hook, Justo Lugo, 49, accepted a hot turkey dinner from Red Cross volunteer Judy Malpass, 66.
“This is nice what they’re doing,” said Lugo, who lives in a seventh-floor apartment at the Red Hook Houses. “God knows I’m hungry.”
Mayor Bloomberg spent part of his holiday with firefighters in Far Rockaway preparing dinner for the firehouse.
“Given the size of the storm and the fires and that sort of thing, we’re really lucky we didn’t have that many people that died,” Bloomberg said.